The Economy and Emergency in India

“Let's get on with the job,” said Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. That was in mid‐1975 when, citing the threat of “economic chaos and collapse”, she declared a state of emergency, suspended civil liberties and began locking up political opponents.

Now, 19 months later, the Indian economy is better off than it has been in years. Inflation is under control, food is in good supply and the economy is growing at a respectable 5 percent or so a year.

These are the “gains of the emergency,” to quote the Government slogan. The Government also likes to talk of “discipline”, describing a country in which strikes are virtually banned and the trains have begun running more nearly on time.

The economy being what it is, some major opposition politicians were released from jail last week and Mrs. Gandhi made the surprise announcement that parliamentary elections would be held in March, the first since the emergency.

Take inflation. In 1947, the cost of living was soaring at an annual rate of 30 percent, but well before the emergencey it had slowed to the 8 percent range. Early, last year, it actually dipped below zero occasionally, but more recently began to climb again.

As for food grain, two successive good monsoon seasons resulted in a record, 118 million‐ton crop last year, up from 100 million in 1975. “She's been very lucky on the monsoons,” observed a foreign diplomat in New Delhi —the “she” meant Prime Minister Ghandi, as it always does in this part of the world.

In the industrial sector, electricity generation was up 15 percent last year, partly because of the greater labor discipline inspired by the emergency, but partly because of more rain. More power fed into the nation's factories.

India's steel plants, some of which were running at 60 percent of capacity two or three years ago, neared 100 percent use and this year, India is even expected to export 2 million tons. Gross national, product is about $85 billion.

In fact, the not‐unjust complaint in New Delhi is that the “other India,” the industrial one; is almost always ignored.

“In New York and London, they all know about hunger in our primitive farming villages,” said an executive at a heavy machinery plant in the thriving industrial belt west of Calcutta. “But who knows that India is not only making almost all of its own steel, even exporting a million tons this year?”

India is indeed getting on with the job. The question is whether the emergency had much to do with that.

WILLIAM BORDERS

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A version of this archives appears in print on January 23, 1977, on Page 109 of the New York edition with the headline: The Economy and Emergency in India. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe